Page:Glossary of words in use in Cornwall.djvu/128

EAST CORNWALL GLOSSARY. 107 Widow-woman, a widuw. Wilk, Welk, sometimes Wolt, a ridgy hump or tumour. Little low hedges round like ufdU,^ BAOOir's E$$ay of Gardening, Wilky, a toad or frog. C. quilkenj or quUkiiu In some parts the immature reptile. Wilyeri a baker or pot under which bread is baked by being buried iu burning embers. N.£. C. Winnard, the red-wing, Merula Uiaca. Winder, window. Wink, the wheel by which straw rope is made. Winniok, to circumvent ; to cheat. Wisht, melancholy; forlorn. This word is so expressive that we have no English synonym fully desoriptiye of its meaning. Browne, a Devonshire man, uses it in his Briitania PastoraUy Bk. I. Song 2 : — His late tvxM had-I-wists, remorseful bitings. In Latimer*s Sermons it is apparently used as a noun : — And when they perceived that Solomon, by the advice of his father, was anointed king, by and by there was all whisht, all their good cheer was done.— Par^'« Edit., p. 115. Far from the town where all is vnsht and still. — ^Maklowe, Hero and Lennder. Woodwall, the green woodpecker, Picas viridia. Some doubt exists as to the bird originally designated the woodwaU. With us it is undoubtedly the green woodpecker. In the glossaries commonly appended to Chaucer's works it is said to mean the golden oriole. The green finch has also been set down as the bird intended. The woodwele sung and would not cease Sitting upon the spra^e, So loud ne waken'd Kobin Hood In the greenwood where he lay. Robin Hood (Bitson). In many places Nightingales, And Alpes, and Finches and Woodwales, Bom, of the Rose. The note of the green woodpecker is very unmelodious, far from a song. The extreme rarity of the golden oriole is conclusive against its being the bird intended. The greenfinch has been suggested, but its song is hardly loud enough to have stirred the slumbers of the freebooter. Although the voice of the green woodpecker can scarcely by any poetic licence be called a song, I incline to think it the bird meant. Tarrel (voL ii. p. 137) gives some interesting information on the etymology of this word. Brockett, in his glossary of North- CountiT words, considers it derived from the Saxon ' whyteiy a knife. In Torkshire and in North America a whittle is a clasp-knife, and to whettle is to cut or hack wood. The origin and meaning of the wood- pecker's name are therefore sufficiently obvious, whytel, whittle, why tele, &c.